In Memorium of a Friend

Yesterday, we lost a dear friend and the Choctaw community lost a true cultural champion with the passing of Tom Colvin.

I remember the first time I saw Tom. It was more than a decade ago at an event hosted by the Jena Band of Choctaw. He was sitting behind a table covered in Choctaw baskets of a style that was 170 years old - native dyes, the old rim style, fine and beautiful - he had made them with his own hands. I was drawn to this man immediately.

Tom was a bit of a paradox. - Although Euro-American he was a custodian of deep Choctaw culture. Although from the deep south, he spoke with a hint of an Irish accent. His story was unique. It sounded like something out of a romanticized novel, but it was real. Tom had grown up in south Louisiana. Born with a hearing impairment, it was difficult for him to interact with people as a youth (His accent was picked up from an Irish speech teacher). With a local Choctaw couple, Sanville and Mathilde Johnson, Tom found a respect and an acceptance that could be hard to come by in Euro-American society.

The Johnsons were part of the Bayou Lacomb Choctaw community, the subject of a short but really important article on Choctaw traditional culture by anthropologist David Bushnell. To the Choctaws he visited, Bushnell was a stranger, a man who showed up asking prying questions about Choctaw culture. They only shared a small part of it with him. The Johnson's cultural knowledge and experience went worlds beyond what is reflected in the article, as influential as it is.

Anthropology says that Choctaw people stopped making traditional houses back in the 1830s, with the start of the Trail of Tears. That's not quite true. Mathilde had grown up living in traditional Choctaw houses in a small community in a remote area of south Louisiana. She didn't set foot in a Euro-American-style house until she was a teenager. Sanville had detailed knowledge of Indigenous Choctaw culture stretching back before Removal through the memories of his uncle Louis Hablee. The Johnsons offered to entrust Tom, then a teenager, with their precious cultural knowledge under the condition that later in his life, Tom would give the knowledge to new generations of Choctaw youth.

The three developed a life-long friendship, a family-type bond. The Johnsons taught Tom basketry the old way- first teaching him to become proficient in splitting and striping the cane and palmetto. They taught him to weave by letting him get a basket almost finished then pointing out a mistake at the very beginning and having him re-do it. They taught him how to make the form of Choctaw houses that they knew. I don't think the Johnsons could have possibly found a better person to entrust their knowledge of Indigenous Choctaw lifeways to.

I always looked forward to running into Tom at Choctaw cultural meetings in Louisiana. To talk with him was to talk with a Choctaw person with memories stretching back before the Trail of Tears. I was fortunate in that he seemed drawn to the traditional pottery work I do, something the Johnsons had told him about, but had not been able to teach him. At one cultural event, I stayed late after the public and other demonstrators had left for the day to fire some clay bowls I'd brought. Tom stayed there with me. For much of an evening, it was just the two of us sitting around the fire talking deep culture and land. We were friends ever since.

Tom was the only person I ever met who could tell me things like what it's like to ride out a hurricane in a traditional Choctaw home, how to keep wasps from building in the roof one, or how to shape a canoe paddle so it doesn't scare away game. He was the only person I've ever met who had living memories passed down to him of Choctaw people chipping stone arrow points and of the really wild way that Choctaw men hunted bears with bow and arrow before guns became common. In sharing these lessons, Tom had a generosity of spirit, a wit, and a sense of humor that few others do.

Once you got to know him, Tom had a soft heart as well. He was staying with us when COVID first hit. At the time, we lived with a precocious cat, Chinchas. The cat had a habit of walking in front of you and abruptly stopping, tripping you in hopes you would give him food. At the start of the visit, Tom would just plow through the stalled cat, kicking him out of the way when he pulled that stunt. By the end of his stay, Tom was sneaking Chinchas food and sharing his buffalo-robe covered bed with him at night.

One of those days, Tom causally mentioned a bird trap like it was common knowledge to any Choctaw person. - Wait, what? - He spent the morning teaching me how to make a deadfall trap with nothing but a sharp-edged tool, a few inches of string, and some sticks. This is a technology so ancient and elegant, and Tom may have been the last living link between it and the Choctaw community at that point in time. Tom sitting with his trap that day is the cover photo of this post.

In our kitchen hangs a set of traditional Choctaw baskets that we use in food prep all the time. From our walls, hang wooden shelves that Tom taught us how to make. The doors we walk through, the windows we look out of, he taught us and helped us frame them all. Tom Colvin is all through our house. For me, he'll always be there in Choctaw culture in a similar way.

Last week, we got to study a collection of very old river cane arrows, and I came across something unexpected in the way they were made. It was a puzzle that probably only Tom could answer I texted him a picture, as I often did, and waited for a response that will never come.

The Choctaw world lost an incredible, unique culture-bearer yesterday. For us, he was more than that. He had become one of our best friends, like a family member. Nana moyoma, e-chi-yakoke, anoti himak hiket yaka, e-chi hoyachi.